YEAR 1

This term the Year One topic is Journey. This is a whole school topic. We will be looking at different parts of the story and using our imagination and creativity to think about different journeys we have been on and want to go on. We will be specifically focusing on Japan and their culture, food and art and incorporating this into our learning.

Reading

It is really important to read with your child as often as possible. Your child should have the opportunity to change their school reading books most days from their colour box. Please encourage your child to do this and come in at the end of the day if you would like to help them to do this. As you are reading, it is useful to stop and ask questions about what the book is about, what the characters are doing and what might happen next. At the end of the book get your child to think about what they like or did not like about the book and reasons why. Please fill in your Reading Diaries once you have read with your child. The children take part in a Guided Reading session each week and during this time we will look and sign their reading diaries - please make sure these are in their book bags each day.

Writing

At the beginning of Year One a lot of emphasis is placed on talking, which will then enable the children to write. The children will take part in lots of drama activities. Using Phonics the children will think about the initial and last sounds in words, use finger spaces and write in full sentences using a capital letter and full stops. We will introduce adjectives (large, blue, beautiful) and joining words (and, but, because, so) to make their sentences more exciting.

As you are walking to school or in the car get the children to describe what they are seeing by asking questions, such as "What does the tree look like?", "What colour is the sky?" and then encourage the children to make this into a sentence, e.g "The tree is tall" and then "The tall tree is in the garden", "The tall tree is in the pretty garden".

We have started teaching grammar lessons. Please come in to school to see our grammar being taught - see dates on the Weekly News for more information.

The children have also started bringing home spelling homework. Please see the link above for the Spell Anywhere website.

To view the English objectives that we will cover this year, please click on the link below:

In Year One we do all our Maths using practical equipment such as various household objects and Numicon. In the first term most of our Maths will be about addition and subtraction. The children will begin to record their number sentences using +, - and = when they are ready. At home you could take part in simple investigations, for example "How many ways can you make the number 6?" 5+1, 4+2, 6+0 etc. The children will also learn how to write their numbers correctly and begin to write these in words as well, such as one, two, three. They will also be learning their number bonds to 10 and 20 by heart.

Other ideas to help at home are to:

Use food at home to create a shop. Price items up to 50p (extend to £1) and use money to buy items and add items together. Start with smaller numbers until your child is confident to use bigger ones.

Read and write numbers that you spot in the environment - practise the formation of writing numbers using a whiteboard, pen and paper or chalk.

Count in 1s and 10s as you go up steps, counting objects or counting money.

Practise taking away using objects ("You have 7 chips, if you eat 3 how many will you have left?")

Use a 100 square to spot patterns in numbers, for example by adding 10 to different numbers.